the past

Sometimes when I’m by myself, my mind wanders to the most hurtful things that have happened in my life. In particular, there is one moment of realization that I had as a pre-teen that set the mood for the rest of my teenage years. It is also one of the most important things for me to express towards my husband so that he never feels this way in relation to me.

Ok enough of the vague intro.

What happened is that at about 12 going on 25, I realized that I had no friends. I was gone for a week from school. When I came back my teachers, my classmates, the people I ate lunch with, the people I played pingpong with. No one asked where I had gone. I was unnoticed.

This is about the time where people stopped saying to me: “Oh, you’re such a sweet girl” to “Wow, I never would have expected you to say that”. And why? This is the time I started using swear words. Constantly. Because I stopped giving a fuck. Because I felt empty, alone, and bored. Because I was sleepy, tired, unmotivated, unmoved, outside the crowd, and selfish. I had to be selfish because no one had my back.

Eventually, being myself like this won me a boyfriend. I treated him terribly.
And after high school, I lost my connection to just about everyone who knew of my existence. Hilariously, I never turned to drugs or alcohol as a young adult. I’m 31 now and still have never smoked a cigarette, gotten blacked out drunk, or gateway’d into the harder things. I’m a square. I’m a square with holes.

I’m used to being alone now. I did a year of living on my own without a roommate. Glorious days of not speaking a single word to a person. Sometimes I miss that. Yet every now and then I remember that weird feeling knowing, and then forgetting again, that no one remembers me.